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Philoponus’ Contribution to Copernicus’ Doctrine of Gravity

Knox, Dilwyn; Knox, John; (2024) Philoponus’ Contribution to Copernicus’ Doctrine of Gravity. In: Vimercarti, Emmanuele, (ed.) Reception of John Philoponus’ Natural Philosophy: Aristotelian Science From Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. (pp. 201-218). Bloomsbury Publishing: London, UK. Green open access

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Abstract

Most of Copernicus’ On the Revolution [of the Heavens], published in 1543, concerns mathematical astronomy. To support his heliocentric hypothesis, he devised an original and detailed doctrine of gravity. In two previous publications, appeared in 2007 and 2013, Knox suggested that the most important components of Copernicus’ doctrine were inspired by the entry for ‘motion’ (kinēsis), in the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia known as ‘the Suda’. Unbeknown to Copernicus, the entry was largely taken from a passage on the motion of the elements in Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul. In this chapter Knox adds two further considerations. First, he analyses Philoponus’ account of elementary motion in detail and compared it to the version in the Suda. Second, he discusses reactions, favourable and unfavourable, to his suggestion that Copernicus’ doctrine drew on the kinēsis entry in the Suda.

Type: Book chapter
Title: Philoponus’ Contribution to Copernicus’ Doctrine of Gravity
ISBN-13: 9781350416277
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.5040/9781350416307.0021
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350416307.0021
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10190014
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